Mission: Tomorrow

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  For the next hour they traded off on the radio, trying to contact both Treva in orbit and Mission Operations back on Earth, sometimes with the headphones on, sometimes allowing the wash of hopeless static to pour out of the speakers.

  “We both heard the voice,” Jonah said.

  “We heard something.” Karie’s mind was moving off the radio. There was so much to do.

  Day three.

  A dust storm came howling out of the desert. They huddled inside the habitat. Dust and grit hissed against the shell. Karie had been working on a protective shield for the life support unit’s loader. Attached to the outside of Pilgrim 2, the loader shipped Martian soil into a chamber, where it was heated and the evaporated water captured. LS apparatus then divided the water into hydrogen and oxygen, adding nitrogen directly from the atmosphere. It produced drinking water and breathable air and was designed to support five people. But the equipment proved balky, in need of constant attention. And then the dust storm drove them back inside before she could fix the shielding in place. What would be left after the storm? Feeling her optimism fray, Karie said, “I’m beginning to think people like your father are right.”

  Jonah scooped fruit paste out of a ration cup and sucked the spoon clean. “Dad’s always right about everything. Just ask him.”

  “Phoenix was a disaster—my pilot killed, the mission aborted. Pilgrim 2 up there right now with five dead, including my brother. And now Jim Krueger. You want to talk about a stupid waste, there it is.”

  “Karie.”

  “You know, when Danny said that stupid waste thing, he was talking directly to me. He was saying, I know you’re going to try to find a way to come out here. Don’t do it.”

  “Well, you did it anyway.”

  They stood by the loader. Dust and grit had wind-blasted through the mechanism, tearing rubber seals, clogging the armatures and servos.

  “We’re going to have to break it down, clean everything, replace the seals, and put it together again. Otherwise we can manually ship the soil, which is more labor than we want.” Karie’s knee throbbed. She ignored it. In the direction of the crashed landing module, something moved. She paused, holding her wrench. A dust devil tracked across the desert, like a fleeing ghost.

  Day nine.

  By now Treva had left orbit, headed back to Earth. Karie had tried everything she could think of to make the radio work, to no avail. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. Possibly their outgoing messages were being heard. There was simply no way to tell. She turned to the hydroponics and other matters demanding attention. Jonah, meanwhile, spent too much time monitoring the useless radio. One morning he shouted, “There’s somebody! I heard somebody.”

  Karie, already suited up, was about to enter the airlock. Dust accumulated on the solar panel array if they didn’t keep it wiped off. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, yes. I was broadcasting to Earth, and then there was a voice. I couldn’t hear what it said, but it was real. I heard it. This time I’m positive.”

  Karie switched to speaker. She cleared her throat and spoke into the microphone, “Pilgrim 1 habitat, this is Pilgrim 1 habitat. Please respond.”

  Jonah leaned in eagerly.

  “Relax,” Karie said. They both knew it would be at least twenty-eight minutes before they received a reply. She was about to stand up when, faintly, a voice spoke through the static. Karie tweaked the noise reduction filter. The voice became slightly clearer. Pilgrim 1 Habitat, this is Pilgrim 1 habitat. Please respond. . .

  An echo.

  Like calling into the mouth of a deep, black, empty cave. Jonah looked stricken. After that, he rarely wasted time with the radio.

  Day seventy.

  Karie lay on her thin mattress. Many nights she and Jonah shared a bunk, but Karie had been sleeping poorly for weeks and wanted her own space tonight. An amber panel near the airlock provided minimal illumination. Tired as she was, she couldn’t let go, her mind constantly worrying at the myriad of tasks. The hydroponics required constant attention. In nightmares, Karie awakened to discover the plants withered and dead. In reality the radishes, lettuce, and green onions were thriving under carefully controlled conditions. Still, they were a long way from a bioregenerative life support system.

  From where he lay in his own bunk, Jonah said: “We’re never leaving this planet.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My father’s not sending a rescue ship.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Somebody reprogrammed the LM computer. Reprogrammed it to burn all our fuel, making sure we’d crash. If Jim hadn’t managed to override it and if you hadn’t been at the controls, we would have all died.”

  “I didn’t exactly execute a soft landing.”

  “We survived, didn’t we?”

  “Two of us did.”

  “Dad knew I would find a way to wiggle out of the agreement I signed. I thought it was odd when he suddenly conceded the point and agreed to a landing. I should have trusted my instincts, but I wanted this so bad.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Dad saw an opportunity, and he seized it. Think of it. Yet another fatal disaster confirms that manned spaceflight pushing the frontier is too dangerous and pointless. A stupid waste, right?”

  “Jonah, it’s his corporation. He didn’t have to kill you to keep you from taking control after his death.”

  “That’s exactly what he had to do.” Jonah’s voice contained bitterness like acid. “My ascension was out of his hands. Grandfather liked me. It was in his will that the family line not be broken. Barring death or some kind of certifiable mental derangement, I was next to take charge of Nova Branson. Period. Dad had to sign off on that before the reins of power passed into his hands.”

  “You’re being a little paranoid.”

  “He’s capable of anything when it comes to getting his way.” Jonah shook his head. “I’m a fool. Look. The retros fail, then the communications fail. That’s pretty coincidental, isn’t it? You’ve said yourself there’s nothing wrong with the radio. That means it has to be the satellite relays. Guess who NASA contracted with to upgrade and facilitate satellite data retrieval? Nova Branson has held those contracts for over a decade. They can facilitate data retrieval from Mars satellites—or subvert it, or filter out what they don’t want seen. We’re dead, Karie, as far as anyone back home knows. Ship crashed, no communication from possible survivors. Done. It’s not paranoia. It’s brilliant. Cold-blooded but brilliant. You see it now, don’t you?”

  “Jonah, I stopped counting on rescue as soon as we established the impossibility of communication.”

  Jonah was quiet for a minute. “In the old days, didn’t the rovers use high-gain microwave transmissions for direct-to-Earth communication?”

  “Find a rover and cannibalize it? Forget it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we have no idea where any of them are, and we’re not equipped to go searching.”

  “Damn it.”

  “There’s another possibility. The landing module. The locator beacon, it transmits directly on high frequency.”

  “Can we adapt that antenna?”

  “No. But we can move the beacon.”

  “How does that help?”

  “All it does now is identify the crash site. Well, crash sites don’t move.”

  “But survivors can move the beacon! We have to go get this thing tomorrow.”

  “Jonah, I’m exhausted. We’ll talk about it in the morning, okay? Two miles on my knee is going to be a stretch, even if I’m rested.”

  “I’ll go alone.”

  “Don’t. It’s too dangerous to separate. I really have to sleep now, okay? We can figure out a plan in the morning.”

  Karie got up and found her way to the head. With the door shut, she turned on the light, opened the medicine kit, and took a couple of sleeping pills. God bless NASA for deciding the pilgrims might need artificially orchestrated rest.


  She woke up groggy, her head like something stuffed with wet cotton. Dust and grit hissed against the habitat’s shell. Karie checked her chronometer. It had been more than ten hours since she took the sleeping pills. Jesus. Dimly, she remembered Jonah shaking her, trying to wake her up. She had brushed him off, rolling onto her side. Now she reached for the lights. They came on in sections, flickering at first. Jonah was gone.

  She checked the outside conditions. Wind speed was variable, between twenty and thirty knots, the direction changeable. She tried to raise Jonah on his helmet com but the storm shredded the signal. She needed line-of-sight. After a couple of hours, the dust storm began to subside. Jonah was running out of time. Karie loaded up with extra oxygen and headed out.

  She came to the wreckage of the LM. Her knee hurt but it was tolerable. The return hike would be worse. She had tried to raise Jonah repeatedly on the helmet com, but no luck.

  She climbed into the LM. Krueger’s body lay frozen in place, attached at the ragged shoulder to a great dark sheen of frozen blood. His face stared at the twisted bulkhead, unmarred, fixed in a blank expression. Karie observed no inkling of the living man. Krueger’s body was like another piece of the inanimate wreckage.

  A tool bag from the habitat sat near a partially removed floor panel. Jonah, going after the damn transponder. Karie picked up the pry bar and ratcheting wrench. The crash had twisted the deck out of alignment. She worked on it for a half hour, finally wrenching the panel aside. The transponder, the size of a shoebox, appeared intact. She detached it from its nest of cables and braces, stowed it in the tool bag, and started back.

  The wind buffeted her. Dust churned all around. The bag was heavy. She shifted it from shoulder to shoulder. Her knee and back hurt. She stopped at the midway point and sat on the gritty hardpan, her head down. Jonah was out here. By now his oxygen was depleted and he had suffocated, another piece of human wreckage. Another catastrophic failure.

  She got up and went on. By the time the habitat came into view, Karie could barely walk. How would she do this, how would she go on alone, day after day, week after week, year after year? The arid future lay before her. She staggered forward. Inside the airlock she closed the outer door, equalized the pressure, entered the habitat—and found Jonah preparing dinner.

  “I was getting worried about you,” he said.

  “Jonah.”

  “What’s wrong—hey, is that the transponder?”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Dust storm caught me. I tried to make it back before it got bad, but it got bad too fast. Wound up digging in behind a hillock. After the storm backed off, I couldn’t figure out where I was for a while. Beyond stupid. My air was pretty low. When I finally got here you were gone. At that point it seemed dumb to go out again, so I’ve been waiting. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m just glad you’re here. I’m so glad.”

  Day five hundred.

  Karie woke before Jonah. She turned on a section of light panels, and Jonah’s face emerged out of the dark beside her. He had taken to trimming his beard, after first threatening to shave it off altogether. She was glad he hadn’t done that. She liked the beard, the way it transformed his man-boy features. In repose, Jonah looked like someone Karie might even love. She placed her hand on his bare shoulder and shook him gently.

  “Jonah.”

  His eyes opened. “Hey.”

  “It’s time,” she said.

  “All right.”

  They suited up.

  The dawn was so cold Karie could feel it even through the insulating coils of her suit. They hiked away from the habitat, Karie limping, and climbed to the top of the ridge. Their feet skidded in the loose scree. Karie had to hold on to Jonah’s arm until they reached the top.

  “Okay,” he said, “where do we look?”

  She pointed to the horizon, where the sky had turned the color of burnished steel. “There. About thirty degrees above the plain,”

  They waited. After a while Karie had to sit down. He helped her and then joined her, and they leaned against each other. They had both lost weight, and they tired too easily, but almost two years in, they were still alive—and not merely surviving. The habitat was designed for expansion. They had deployed the diggers, which tunneled out from Pilgrim 1, allowing them to construct a long underground “greenhouse,” where they planted and nurtured a greater variety of vegetables and fruits. They still supplemented their diets with the supplies brought from Earth, but they were far less dependent than they had been in the beginning. The habitat was nearly a closed system, self-sustaining. Nearly. And if they had to get there, Karie was optimistic that they would. Jonah, an amateur geologist, was even doing some science. Pilgrim 1 was a viable foothold. Now they were looking at the dawn sky. When it happened, it was so brief they almost missed it: A brilliant flash described an arc—and then Pilgrim 2 was gone.

  “Goodbye, Danny.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, Karie? You’re my favorite Martian.”

  She laughed. “So we’re Martians?”

  “We both know my father isn’t sending a rescue ship.”

  “It doesn’t have to be Alistair, you know.”

  “Sure. Someday there’ll be a knock on the door.”

  “What would happen if everyone thought you were dead and then you weren’t?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Nova Branson is still your birthright. You told me Alistair can’t disown you corporately, not according to the terms of your grandfather’s will. I believe it will be worth it to someone to come up here looking for you. You know, there’s gold in them Martian hills. Maybe that transponder trick worked.”

  “Karie, I wouldn’t count on it. Hey, we’re doing all right, aren’t we? I mean as Martians.”

  They helped each other back to their feet.

  “We’re doing great,” Karie said. “Come on, let’s go home.”

  In 2001, Jack Skillingstead won Stephen King’s ON WRITING contest. Not long afterward, Jack began selling regularly to major science fiction and fantasy markets. To date he has published more than thirty stories in various magazines, Year’s Best volumes, and original anthologies. Much of his short work has been collected in Are You There And Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press, 2009 and reprinted 2014 by Fairwood Press). Jack’s novel, Life On The Preservation (Solaris 2013), was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. He has also been a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. Jack lives in Seattle with his wife, writer Nancy Kress.

  EDITOR’S BIOGRAPHY

  Bryan Thomas Schmidt is an author and Hugo-nominated editor of adult and children’s science fiction and fantasy novels and anthologies. His debut novel, The Worker Prince, received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases of 2011, and was followed by two sequels. As editor, his anthologies include Shattered Shields (Baen, 2014), Beyond The Sun (Fairwood, 2013), Raygun Chronicles (Every Day Publishing, 2013) and Space Battles (Flying Pen Press, 2012) with two more forthcoming from Baen Books and St. Martin's Griffin in 2015 and 2016. He hosts Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat the first Wednesday of every month at 9 p.m. ET on Twitter under the hashtag #sffwrtcht and is a frequent guest and panelist at World Cons and other conventions. His website is www.bryanthomasschmidt.net and his Twitter handles is @BryanThomasS.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to all the writers for trusting me with their work, even those whose work doesn’t appear in these pages. All of their contributions helped shape this anthology into the book it is—one I’m very proud of.

  Thanks as always to Toni Weisskopf, Tony Daniel, and the Baen Family for giving me yet another opportunity.

  Thanks to Beth Morris Tanner and Alex Shvartsman for extra eyes when they were sorely needed.

  To my parents, Ramon and Glenda, and my editing partner and best friend, Valerie Hatfield, for support, encouragement,
and understanding.

  To Louie and Amelie, my babies, for unconditional love and snuggling.

  And to God for making me a Creator in His image and opening doors for me to create.